


Safe Harbor

by startyourbenjens



Category: Star Trek: Picard, Star Trek: Voyager
Genre: Angst, Did I mention the smut?, F/M, Fluff and Smut, Happy Ending, Sex outside the bedroom, Smut, as happy as it can be, only a little
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-05
Updated: 2020-05-05
Packaged: 2021-03-02 23:00:25
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,739
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24014833
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/startyourbenjens/pseuds/startyourbenjens
Summary: The solid, broad shouldered weight of him pressing her against the door is indescribably magnificent. Kathryn leans into him, the arms around her, the hot breath fluttering against her pulse as he buries himself into her neck. Now that he’s this close she can smell whatever he was cooking mixed with his own cologne and the warm scent that’s naturally him. She’s missed it more than she could ever admit.Set in the Picard Universe, my take on Janeway and Chakotay set during the start of PIC season one. Features a lot of smut and maybe a mild amount of plot as well for flavoring.
Relationships: Chakotay & Kathryn Janeway, Chakotay/Kathryn Janeway
Comments: 11
Kudos: 67





	Safe Harbor

**Author's Note:**

> This probably could have been a two chapter fic but for reasons I cannot explain, it just felt right to post it all as one. This is mostly J/C with other characters primarily as mentions or small amounts of dialogue. There are probably a lot of theories for how we would find Janeway & Chakotay in the Picard universe. As long as they're together, I like all of them. This is the version I like to imagine.
> 
> And lastly, I am so sorry for any errors. I truly tried but I have also reached a point where I cannot proofread this anymore without pulling my hair out.

**PART I**

_Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks  
Within his bending sickle’s compass come;  
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,  
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.  
If this be error and upon me proved,  
I never writ, nor no man ever loved._

_-William Shakespeare, Sonnet 116_

**_YEAR. 2385_**.

The messages chimes in on her personal PADD in a flurry with dozens of others.

_‘Safe.’ – C_

She can’t leave the office early when the word of it first reaches headquarters. 

Starfleet Admirals don’t get to run off to check on their former crew when Mars is burning and there are thousands of Starfleet officers, civilians, and Federation members to account for in the chaos of the Synth Rebellion. 

Merely the term, _Synth Rebellion_ , sounds unreal. It’s a holonovel and Tom Paris is stroking his ego right now at its popularity. 

Yet the truth is that thousands of lives are gone in minutes. An entire planet set ablaze, no chance for rescue or controlling the damage. It, this unfathomable synthetic attack, happens and they are all powerless in its wake. 

It’s agonizing to spend so many hours connecting to people with brass shoulders like hers when the ones she really wants to see are captains of starships, engineers and their holo-novelist husbands, Vulcans with children in Starfleet Academy, and holograms who could be anywhere in the universe at this moment. 

Or Starfleet Captains on a three-week anthropological excursion as a course requirement for a group of upper level cadets. 

When the reports flooded in that the Synthetics on Utopia Planitia went rogue and slaughtered thousands, turning the ships in orbit against the planet with mass casualties sustained, Kathryn Janeway’s immediate thoughts went out to the crew she commanded a mere seven years ago. 

Less than a decade and it feels like a lifetime ago, something that happened to a different Kathryn Janeway, like once again another version of herself would walk through Starfleet Headquarters right now to fix this universe as well. But a minute passes, then two, five minutes, and there remains only one of her which means that fixing this chaos sits squarely on her decorated shoulders.

_Surely one timeline couldn’t be so cruel._

They were scattered across the galaxy now, never more than one comm call away but in that moment, they felt as far away as the Delta Quadrant again. 

It was a weary feeling to hold someone’s fate in your responsibility but in this instance of sorrowful faces looking across the stunned conference table, she would take it all over again. At first these elite members of Starfleet upper ranks and Federation diplomats were quiet. Then the roaring began, the cries of action, the urgent demands of what must be done to save their people. The silence that cracked in the air when they realized with broken despair that no one could be saved, the damage was done and now all that was left was for them to frame the narrative of what happens next in this terrible moment of galactic history that will haunt them all for years to come. It stayed with her when she ducked away in her office for a moment’s reprieve, when she sipped her reheated coffee, when she gently urged for her secretary to go home to his husband and their children. 

It’s a silence that stretched across Mars. After the screaming died. After the _people_ died. 

The clock on the wall was almost ticking into the next day when she finally managed to get out of Starfleet Headquarters. Her shoulders ached with knots that had not been there that morning.

Captain Kirsten Clancy leaned in her doorway, arms folded, hair falling out of its previously tidy updo, just as tired and lonely in this awful work of devastation control. Clancy hauled herself out with dry words and no small effort of her own exhaustion. Kathryn, worn out and bone tired, left any belongings she might otherwise have brought home and finally forced herself to leave.

She would be back soon enough. A few hours and she would likely return before the sun could rise again. 

The world was dark outside of the tall Starfleet building. The bustling people of San Francisco were conspicuously absent, all of them inside, mourning for what had been lost that day. 

_How many of them,_ she wondered, were like her, _wondering about tomorrow as well? Starfleet was changed forever now_.

They would find out tomorrow or, as the chronometer above the San Francisco transporter stations show, later today. Kathryn sighs as she approaches the transporter pad. Time seems to keep slipping away from her when all she wants is to freeze it, if only for a short time to hold on to those she loves. She can’t bear to think about it anymore. Not the synths or Mars or policy updates considering recent events. Her whole body yearns to be home. 

The young cadet operating the night shift of the transporter station has dark circles beneath their eyes. She squeezes their hand firmly, squaring her shoulders back with a confidence belying what she actually feels and offers them the most she can which is a promise of tomorrow, that there is a reason they joined Starfleet. It seems to work to some effect. The corners of their lips quirk in a slow, soft smile, nodding with her words.

Kathryn gives them the coordinates of the front porch that Chakotay built for them in their second year together in the Alpha Quadrant and waits for the cool wind of home to brush against her skin.

Unlike her, Chakotay hadn’t thrust himself into more work the second they arrived in the Alpha Quadrant. His conditions upon return with Starfleet demanded reprieve and time before he would recommit. Frankly, Kathryn was shocked that they would be willing to accept any terms and conditions given that the original purpose of her mission was to retrieve him to stand for his crimes committed within the Maquis. She was prepared to rally whatever fame their triumphant return warranted them.

Fortunately, all her bracing was wholly unnecessary. Recovering from the tail end of the Dominion War and rebuilding around the Alpha and Beta Quadrants, Starfleet offered them the most fanfare it could afford with little opposition to any of the particulars.

Time off and a position waiting were the Federation spoils of war for him. 

Kathryn was given the old house from her mother. It was their summer home but after the death of her father and then with her own self presumed missing or dead, neither Gretchen nor Phoebe Janeway had ever seemed to find much comfort in the rustic old cabin. Too many memories of the people they dearly missed.

Chakotay made it a home, some place vibrant and alive. A plain wood cabin turned into a cozy three bedroom with all the modern amenities she needed yet still somehow distinctly away from the rest of the world. 

The outside light activates with her arrival. The sturdy wood feels reassuring beneath her tired feet. The aches inside her boots throb to remind her of their existence, knowing that they are almost home and free. 

Most of the lights that she can see from the screened in porch seem to be off but the living room is bright through the windows. Kathryn frowns. She could have sworn she set it to deactivate with her departure but that seems so long ago now she can’t recall. Perhaps Phoebe left it on when she came by to pick up the dogs.

She and her sister have a long-standing agreement that whenever chaos erupts, and it always does, Phoebe will retrieve them for a few days. Kathryn will miss them terribly, especially with Chakotay gone, but she knows in her heart it’s for the best. Her hours will be innumerably long in the coming days and Phoebe is able to work from home as needed.

She braces herself for the lonely night ahead.

The cool air brushes her neck, sending a chill down her spine. Her uniform feels unnatural and heavy. _Dirty_. Everything from the last eighteen hours has soaked into the fabric and she feels an unnerving need to shed this spoiled second skin. 

Kathryn finally steps forward, quietly twisting the knob to her home. 

_(It’s a little old fashioned to have a door that you have to twist in order to open but she’s come to enjoy it. It’s a definitive step of coming home and shaking off the tendrils of whatever she left behind.)_

She has one brief moment of entering the place that feels most familiar, to breathe in the scent of the candles she loves to burn in the evenings mixed with the lingering sawdust residue from the last bookshelf he completed for her before he left, and to taste the first wind of relief filling her chest. 

For the first time in a mercilessly long day, time slows down.

Kathryn sees him emerging from the kitchen, presumably, from the soft, almost gone scent of something warm and maybe even a tad bit spicy, having just put away what is certainly a cold dinner.

His uniform fits loosely, the jacket casually half-zipped and his grey undershirt beginning to slip from its neat tuck into his black uniform trousers. There are scuffs covering the toes of his boots and he’s missing two rank pips from his collar. He stops in his track, the hard edges of his gaze turning soft when he catches her.

Then the world catches up to her again.

_“How--?”_

Chakotay meets her at the door, arms wrapping around her middle and catching her as she collapses into the respite of someone else’s strength.

The solid, broad shouldered weight of him pressing her against the door is indescribably magnificent. Kathryn leans into him, the arms around her, the hot breath fluttering against her pulse as he buries himself into her neck. Now that he’s this close she can smell whatever he was cooking mixed with his own cologne and the warm scent that’s naturally him. She’s missed it more than she could ever admit.

His hair has grown a few centimeters too long for regular Starfleet preferences in the last few months, the silver that teased his hairline when they first got home has matured into a few long strands peppering the otherwise soft black lengths. Kathryn doesn’t mind, especially not now when its silky ends brush lightly along the collar of her uniform. The huff of her name from where he is buried against her skin makes her chest fall with the breath she’s been holding since the first report came in that morning. 

She tries to talk but her words are muffled by fabric of his jacket and her own stubborn unwillingness to separate herself from him.

“I wanted to leave sooner but--” 

“I know.” Chakotay cuts her off, pulling back a hair’s breadth to gently hold her face, to brush the loosened strands away and gaze at her in late evening hours moonlight streaming through the windows. 

His smile is accented with the tease of his dimples, soft and kind and utterly tender. “Welcome home, Kathryn.”

Her shoulders—hell, maybe her entire _being_ \-- drop. Chakotay is exceedingly gentle with her, touching her softly, caressing her and drawing her back into the light with him.

Kathryn closes her eyes and leans into the comfort of his touch. Any minute and he’ll kiss her, she knows it. He’ll kiss her and it’ll feel like the first time and the hundredth time.

She shakes her head, trying to draw herself back into the present, memory and questions flooding her. Kathryn pulls back to stare at him.

“ _How_ are you here? Orders were to—”

“I know.” He interrupts her again, closing the distance she’s created and brushing his lips along her neck. He runs his hands down her shoulders to the neat tuck of her undershirt at her waist and back up again. There’s a change in his voice, something on a precipice, teetering himself between this moment and the imminent next. Kathryn can feel the pains that had plagued her before she came home dissipating beneath his palms and the first stirring of something else too. “I came home anyway.”

It might be the first time she’s laughed since he left two weeks ago. She glares at him but the smirking curl of her smile betrays her anyway. 

“You can’t go rogue every time Starfleet gives you an order that you don’t like, Chakotay.” She draws him to her now, kissing him, tasting him, reveling in the feeling of having him home again. There’s a sound that rumbles like a growl into their connection, halting and low, coming from deep within him.

 _Promising_.

She brushes the hair from his face, tracing the edge of his tattoo near his hairline. He’s a little darker, she notices. All those hours spent teaching in the sunlight have kissed his skin in a way she envies deeply. He is fire drawing her in. He trembles at her touch.

The same freedom she’s felt in not having to repress her own desires since returning home has made him bolder, wilder. Traces of that long-ago Maquis rebel slip forward with greater frequency once he stopped spending every aching minute of his existence trying to hold back his feelings for her.

“It seems to have worked well for me so far.” He chases her kiss again, slipping another harsh moan, deeper this time, rougher. She feels it in every nerve from where they touch down to her toes.

“You presume that’s skill and not luck, _Captain_.” Kathryn quips, nipping her teeth into his bottom lip and using it to pull him back when he attempts to break away for air. Her hands pull hard in his hair, sharp pain scoring the base of his scalp that shifts to an even sharper, more pleasurable sensation when she traces the seam of lips with her tongue. “Welcome home, Chakotay.”

She hasn’t forgotten anything from before she came home. She _couldn’t_. But she can be here in this moment with him, reveling in stolen happiness. Kathryn can lose herself in this, twist herself around him and with him, stumble back to the bedroom and show him how glad she is that he’s home, _orders be damned_. 

His hands shift to cup her face a little too hard. 

“I don’t think it’s my _luck_ you missed, Admiral.”

She does not anticipate the explosion or the low growl of relief that rumbles from his chest when they collide. 

_“Chakotay.”_ She murmurs his name into the air crackling with intensity between them.

The dig of the wall and the doorknob behind her back is a little too firm. 

Chakotay is fierce and unyielding and Kathryn has not realized until his grip starts to bruise how much she needed this; a singular course of action, no fighting, no talking, no debate, only _this_. 

Her shirt rides up as she reaches for him; his hands slide down, cupping her ass and hauling her up, pinning her exactly where he wants her.

Kathryn clutches the collar of his uniform, eager for grounding when he gives her none but to trust in him. The fabric bends easily under her desperation. Her hands land on the warm, wondrous span of his body beneath it. 

Chakotay gasps and shivers at her cool, Starfleet Headquarters standard temperature touch that hasn’t quite returned to normal. Yet it does nothing to stop him as he launches his attack again, teeth drawing into the jut of her collarbone, tongue chasing over it immediately after it to alleviate the abused skin. He always feels like an inferno against her, burning her up from the inside before they’ve done anything more than this breathless, urgent kissing. 

_Well, maybe a little more than kissing_ , she thinks. Breathless kissing with her ankles twisted together behind his back, crying out at the first familiar sensation of his cock pressing forward against the fabric of his uniform. Kathryn strains for it frantically with her whole being, pushing herself down to find more of that elusive relief.

“Chakotay, I--” 

He cuts her off with a searing kiss and eager hands that wrench the Starfleet jacket from her, tugging it clumsily down her arms because the idea of not touching her is simply more than he can stand.

Kathryn is not oblivious to how he cuts her off each time she tries to object but for now, she’s willing to play along. She’ll remind him of his error later when they’ve sated the first—and maybe second—round of desire.

Right now, she reaches back for him, moaning around his tongue as it meets hers.

Right now, she is clutching to the heady knowledge that she is held up purely by proximity and _want_.

It’s her turn to gasp when those same magical, unrelenting hands are skirting under her own grey undershirt, disregarding the uncomfortable bra to slip beneath the fabric. The reaction is instant; she is on fire where he touches her, burning like a supernova, nerves aflame, eyes closing against her will at the first rough touch of those long, calloused fingertips cupping her breasts, teasing them to tender points.

Chakotay swallows her moan with his own, feeling the pebbled flesh against his palms. Their early discovery of how unbelievably sensitive her breasts are to the attentions of his mouth paired wonderfully with his years-long, finally realized obsession with them. He would lick and suck and nip and spend entire mornings perched above her, drawing them into his mouth and rolling the tip between his teeth until she forced him away, either lower or higher, he never cared which.

His jaw fell to the floor the first time she wore something other than her uniform to an official event. Their fullness taunted him the entire evening from behind the low satin cut of her dress, keeping him half hard for hours as he watched her effortlessly circle the room.

Chakotay has always marveled at how she can look so irresistibly attractive despite Starfleet’s best efforts at a conservative uniform. He’s similarly considered it a crime against him personally how it’s also hidden her away from his more lascivious gazes.

Kathryn considers it a crime that they’re still here, when they could have been naked hours ago if only she had known he was home.

“Bedroom, Chakotay. The—”

But he’s far beyond the point of listening to rationale. He lost that the moment she kissed him and welcomed him home and his body reminded him with a visceral insistence how long it’s been since he’s held her in his arms and blacked out the world.

“Right here.” The shake of his head is punctuated with his mouth slipping lower, kissing her in all the secret places he’s learned that drive her wild.

Kathryn squirms, trying in vain to find relief and only being met with _more_. More riding her hips to taste the promise he offers her, more teasing of finding him only to lose him, trying to bring him closer to her in this wanton writhing yearning for completion.

She can feel everything radiating from him, the heat that he’s turned up in their home to combat the cold she feels at work, the worry that’s been coiling inside him every hour they weren’t together, even knowing that she wasn’t due to be on Mars at all that week, and the raw, powerful, _furious_ hunger to feel they are both so distinctly alive. 

“Wait—”

He seizes her in a kiss that is equal parts feral and devoted, words punctuated only with the rise and fall of the rhythm as they move together. “ _Weeks_ , Kathryn. Once I heard—we didn’t drop out of warp until we saw Earth.”

And, god and all her other deities, _he’s right_. She can feel it too, that hungry yearning consuming her very being to feel him there, to rock right up to the brink of madness and fall over the precipice with him inside her.

“I’m glad you’re here.” Kathryn seizes him back in return, sucking in air in the sparse seconds she can between the break of passionate kisses and soft sounds as they race to touch each other. “Even if I will have to write you up for insubordination.”

Chakotay can feel her smile against his mouth.

“I’ll add it to my list of offenses.”

There’s a sound of something ripping or stretching beyond the boundaries of normal function and goddamnit, she can’t believe she’s still wearing anything at all. It should have melted away completely at the first look from him when she walked through that door, incinerating along with all the exhaustion she carried home that has burned away at the intensity of sheer need. 

“Fuck me and maybe I’ll be lenient.”

She takes his moan into her with a kiss and consumes his dwindling restraint with it.

He has to put her down to undress her, a task he takes with feverish enthusiasm. Kathryn lets herself slide along his body, sweat beginning to coat them both, sinking her teeth into his throat when she feels that first naked brush of him pushing at her core. Chakotay bucks wildly, her back hitting the wall with a force that takes the air out of her.

She’s all smooth bare skin, commanding him wordlessly with the press of her breasts against him and the hot breath frantically teasing every expanse of him she frees, and yet he’s still unbearably dressed, the friction between them sharp and stark, pulling at every one of her senses as they move together. A high, needy whine escapes her kiss-swollen lips when he cradles her leg around his waist, running up the firm muscle until both hands are cupping her ass and the thought she can’t chase away is how they are still _too far apart_. 

She reaches down to cup him roughly through his trousers, hand trapped between her own naked, slick body and his clothed erection. 

“You’re too dressed, _Captain_.”

Chakotay sputters in his assault on her neck. Kathryn feels it reverberate like power arcing down her spine. 

If there is one thing Kathryn Janeway is good at, its problem solving. 

“Godamnit, Kathryn.” Her fingers wrap around the thick, swollen length of him, caressing every inch she can reach while he bucks and writhes under her ministrations. Desperation draws Chakotay to duck his head in turnabout, drawing a stiffened nipple between his teeth. He pulls with sharp edges of his teeth and teases with his tongue and sucks on the tender place that drives her crazy and Kathryn rides herself as best she can against her own hand and the aching push of his hips. 

She could never have imagined still wanting someone so badly after years of being together. Seven years almost since their return to the Alpha Quadrant, six years and some months since they had a private ceremony on Chakotay’s homeworld with just them and an officiant and then the moon and stars above their head as they made love on a blanket in an open field. 

Almost a decade and they’re still rutting together like teenagers against any surface they can find.

Except that it’s not quite like that. This isn’t the heat of teenagers caught in a moment of careless disregard. This is history and pain and reminding each other that they are living, breathing, utterly _vital_ beings in a devastated galaxy and tomorrow must come with them in its clutches. They can only steal time for this moment, this sensation. 

Kathryn shakes her head, dislodging ugly thoughts and the breathless way he tastes her lips.

“No more waiting, Chakotay.” She echoes his insistence from seconds before. It’s tough one handed but she makes swift work of the clasp of his uniform pants until she can finally touch him, really touch him, skin to skin. Where his hands were warm he is somehow an inferno beneath her palm, thick and strong and pulsing with every stroke. 

He swears again, mouth hot and filthy as he moves to taste her unattended breast. He was no slouch himself in rapidly learning where she is the most sensitive, attuning himself to her body like he was born to do nothing else.

Chakotay is diligent and attentive, circling the stiffened tip with his tongue exactly as he’s learned she loves, bordering the pain of too much with enough brief, wonderful seconds of relief to drive her to the precipice of release every time. Now is no different, so wanting and bruising then adoring because _fuck_ he loves her tits as he’s told her a hundred times.

Kathryn draws him to her, searching for his mouth, whole being shuddering when the air hits her bare breast after it spills from his mouth with a passion so tender it throbs between them. 

Chakotay drifts his other attentions lower, caressing a confident hand between them, teasing through dense curls and the wet evidence of how much she wants him right now. Too quickly for her normal preference but perfect for this moment, he strokes two thick fingers inside her. Kathryn screams into the midnight air, head falling back to thud against the wall. It’s too fast and too soon and _exactly_ what she needs.

The palm of his hand grinds clumsily against her clit, pressing just enough then not at all and driving her reckless with how badly she wants to fall apart on the piston of his hand. Chakotay lets her ride his hand, fucks her relentlessly with it, stretching her as deep as he can from this angle while whispering shameless endearments about watching her like this, wet, and hot, and desperate to come.

She has to fight against every clawing instinct in her body to stop herself from giving in, to push him back only to tug frantically at the clothes still adorning him.

He’s spent countless hours mastering with fevered intensity how to draw out pleasure from her so profound she can’t breathe and it feels like an impossible task to push him away from the rapture building in her toes and moving upward but she needs to feel all of him right now. She can’t give in until it’s all of him, all skin and scars and muscle and weary bones frenzied together in the best way possible. 

The broadness of him has been her undoing for years, the way he settles himself between her thighs and the sheer immensity of him splaying her open to every wanton thing he wants to do to her now that they are finally naked together.

There is a power in each that amplifies the other, chemistry bonding and reacting in powerful explosions. He loves her ferocity, the supple strength as she moves with him, taking and giving and being nothing less than the Kathryn Janeway he has loved for almost fifteen years. 

Kathryn loves how he fits and stretches, how perfect he is with her while his simple presence pushes her for more. This contrary man who is her best friend and her lover, the epitome of her professional headaches and the most honorable man she’s ever known. It’s delicious and exciting and every day is a familiar agony of wanting and waiting for each other. 

Chakotay still worships at the altar of her legs every time, mouth drawn slack at the firm lines and the power she holds standing before him, naked and flushed, sending an excruciating throb to the full cock desperately waiting to be with her again. Kathryn licks her lips, longing to reach her arms around the strong shoulders and draw him back to her. 

Fifteen years that she’s known him in all and she still cannot believe how much she has _always_ wanted him. Chakotay does his best every day to remind her that the feeling is so much more than mutual. That she is and has always been the most stunning woman he’s ever known and the only one he’s ever given his heart to.

He surges to close the distance between them again and for good. Kathryn cries out at the jut of his cock pressing hot and insistent between her thighs. The force of him stuns her and he steals the surprise to kiss her deeper, licking every moan from her body into his, grinding himself harder and harder against her while she drips and smears along his rutting cock. 

Kathryn only has to guide him, fingers stretched around his length with breathless commands and then he’s there with her, perfect and full and chasing away the demons of anything on the other side of their front door. 

_“Oh.”_

_“Kathryn.”_

Her hips will ache dreadfully in the morning and for a man brushing fifty he doesn’t have any business hoisting her up like he does, bruising fingertips on her ass and making her eyes roll back when he angles perfectly to hit _that_ spot. Filling her over and over, kissing her neck, her breasts, spreading her wide and punishing at every tight thrust. 

She slips back and forth with him, riding each stroke he gives and meeting him at the peak only to tempt themselves away, arching into another long exhale of waiting to fall. Every high sound and low rumble that spills from them is caught in a kiss or a nip of teeth and tongues and shuddering clashes. He growls at the carnal feeling of her breasts pressed against his chest, the sinful friction of soft skin and sweat pooling between them stealing breath and their control. Kathryn wants him more with every panting moment, wants that raw, pure power he holds in for her. 

Her nails score into his neck, grasping for anything to ground her a little longer in this race, daring him to mark her in return. 

“ _Oh, yes_ ,” Kathryn whimpers into his ear, relishing in the instant reaction it provokes. The sputter of his hips, the long, meticulous strokes drawn out to drive her insane halting to short, angry neediness. Keeping him there longer, loving to feel him inside her, stretched and helpless and powerful all impossibly broken together with him. It still sends him reeling every time. The only thing that gets him more is--

“ _Fuck me, honey_. _That’s it._ _Right there_.” 

The purr of her voice and the decadent desire for him and all the semblance he ever has of making this last gets lost in the fevered pitch running dangerously high. The hard slap of their lower bodies writhing together. Chakotay moving one hand from her ass--

_Oh!_

Between them, touching her, thumb pressing the perfectly right amount on her clit and every muscle throughout her body spasms, rocked and seized with a pleasure so strong tears pool and sparks alight her skin. Back arched, toes curled, breasts straining forward to meet his hungry affections as the orgasm stretches and stretches and Chakotay keeps moving and pulsing within her.

Fire and lightning strike chaos through every nerve in her body, running circuits up and down and he still doesn’t _stop_.

There’s a different sort of relentless, merciless danger in him tonight and she’s not ready to think about what spurred this on. Kathryn closes her eyes and lets it all consume her, the endless sensation of fullness, the low, pleasured sounds coming from her husband as he gets closer and closer to the edge.

She can feel the second pulse coming on the swift heels of the first and she isn’t ready for it as much as she absolutely yearns for it. Kathryn is soaked with perspiration and desire and she’s dripping on him and he’s slick inside her. 

Chakotay sinks his teeth into her neck, biting and sucking and Kathryn screams, untethered and undone, overwhelmed and blinding lights behind her eyes as she shivers and breaks and he still doesn’t stop. She’ll be covered in little purple and red splotches on her neck tomorrow and he’ll kiss each one before repairing the damaged skin.

She thinks about leaving them, wearing them to headquarters if only for the day.

She thinks about telling him, letting him see them before she leaves and making him wait for her to come home.

Tears stream down her cheeks, happy and blissful and needing him to come so impossibly bad because she’s simply not sure she can take any more of this without disintegrating completely. 

Blood is pounding in her ears. Kathryn reaches for him, clutching his face in her hands to demand his attention to her. Chakotay follows, sloppy and distracted, and kisses her again. She’s lost in it and even as she tries to urge him to completion, orgasm takes her again. It’s a barely whispered plea against his lips, begging him on a high, rolling whine to come for her that takes the air and the urgency from his chest. He groans and comes and comes with Kathryn’s legs shaking violently around his waist. 

They don’t remember stumbling to the couch. 

Kathryn doesn’t remember moving from the wall to the living room and collapsing on top of him. She barely remembers breathing but takes it in the quiet, exhausted contentment and even the sticky mess between her thighs. She hasn’t been this filthy since their last vacation, attending a loosely deemed diplomatic event on Freecloud. She wore a backless gown that was black when she was standing but rippled with starlight when they danced together. Kathryn felt elegant and indecent and scorching to have his fingertips on the small of her bare back at that very public event. 

He pushes her through two bone-rattling orgasms that evening before even making it back to their hotel room. 

Back in this moment on Earth, she suspects it’s mostly Chakotay’s work that gets them to the comfort of their couch and is certain that it’s him who pulls the soft throw blanket over her naked backside as she stretches herself leisurely on top of him. 

“I knew you were okay.” He cranes his neck forward to kiss her forehead. “I just didn’t know how much I needed to see you until you walked through that door.” 

Kathryn draws patterns of molecules on his shoulder. She understands the feeling all too well. 

Peace has always been a tenuous gift, lovely but unstable. Now it’s time to talk about Mars.

It is not some unavoidable, unbreachable subject. He is a Starfleet officer and she is a Starfleet admiral and they cannot pretend that the outside world will wait forever behind these walls. 

“I wasn’t able to get in touch with everyone.” She mumbles, mouth slack and words tiring to form. Chakotay runs his fingers along her spine and goosebumps erupt in his trail. 

“Tom and B’Elanna were vacationing with Miral. B’Elanna received a priority transport home to headquarters and Tom is going to take the first civilian transport with Miral. B’Elanna will likely be in to meet you for lunch tomorrow.” 

Kathryn smiles, already looking forward to it. There is a glass of water on the table and a cup of tea that is probably almost as cold as the dinner that’s been waiting on her. She yearns for coffee but grabs his water instead. 

“Good.” She lifts her head to lazily kiss his chest, shifting uncomfortably until she can prop herself up to sip slowly. “I knew there was an upgrade coming soon to the synthetic models and they consulted her directly, but I didn’t know if--” 

Chakotay is already shaking his head, the overgrown salt and pepper locks falling softly around his long features, some of it splayed the couch pillow behind him. She remembers the first time they saw each other on the view screen of Voyager and her eyes well for a moment, thinking of all that they’ve overcome and what they have yet to face. 

She has to lift herself slightly to sip the water and she doesn’t miss the way his gaze immediately drifts lower to her breasts. She raises a disbelieving brow at him when she feels the briefest reaction stir from him. The bastard smirks and she shakes her head, rolling her eyes but not quite ruling out _later_.

“They’re fine. The Doctor--”

“I know.” Kathryn interrupts, closing her eyes and letting the cool water trail down her throat as she carefully manages to sip it without spilling on Chakotay and put the glass back on the table. “The Doctor is helping at one of the new refugee centers, assisting one of the newer Romulan settlements prepare a basic medical center and ensuring they have the necessary supplies. Seven was en route to help him but had to divert her course to convene with our ambassador on the Borg Reclamation Project. I spoke to her already.” 

Kathryn sobers, lowering herself to kiss him gently. It’s soft and terribly tender, rich with so many things they haven’t even begun to discuss yet. 

“Harry left Utopia Planitia three days ago.” She pulls back to look at him, meeting the soft brown eyes that are searching her for injuries, physical and mental. “His refit was finished ahead of schedule. He was on his way to one of the Romulan perimeter planets but Starfleet froze their mission as soon as word of the attack hit headquarters.” 

Captain Harry of the Federation Starship _Rhode Island_ was among the first to volunteer their services toward the relocation of Romulan citizens. Chakotay had beamed with pride when she told him that evening over dinner of warm vegetable stew on a cold Indiana night.

Kathryn hadn’t expected any of her own to make that sacrifice of changing their entire career to aid the Romulans, knowing they had done something so similar once before and it would be cruel to ask them to do it again. 

But she needn’t have asked. Harry volunteered his crew and if there was any dissent among the ranks, it never reached Starfleet HQ. B’Elanna, though now mostly centered also in the ranks of Starfleet Engineering theory corpe, also volunteered her time reading essays and providing feedback on theoretical methods of shielding to protect as many as they could from the potentially devastating aftermath. 

They all came together, piece by piece, and she could not be prouder to call that team her family. 

Chakotay releases a heavy breath. She knows how much he cares for Harry, almost as much as she cares for her former ensign. Kathryn is struck not for the first of the evening or the last time in her life with the wish that she could have made it home earlier. 

“Good.” He reaches up and brushes the errant hairs back from her face. She hadn’t realized until now how loose it had all come, tumbling down over her shoulders, wild and untamed, starting to brush her shoulders again. Chakotay continues. 

“Tuvok was on Vulcan at the time. He hasn’t heard from his youngest yet but his wife says she shouldn’t be in any danger. She was going to Mars but her convoy wasn’t due to arrive for twelve hours prior to the attacks.” 

Kathryn nods, making a mental note to check on the status of that convoy first thing when she gets into the office tomorrow. Whatever facade Tuvok may hold in place, propped up by the logical tenants he clings to, she knows that he will rest easier with the knowledge that his daughter is safe, somewhere far away from the burning planet. 

When he grasps her hands between his, rough fingertips tracing her cheek, Kathryn’s shoulders slump at the heat passing from his skin to hers, the relief seeping into the contact they share. “Almost everyone has checked in already. Most of the rest are people who have been holding down civilian lifestyles since long before today.” 

“I know I can’t protect them all forever.” She admits, turning her head to kiss his wrist. “And I know I should care about all of them, not just our crew, and I do but as soon as I heard the news the first thing I thought of was their faces. I kept wondering if they were okay and how far away from the damage they were and what names I could recall on the Relocation Volunteer roster.” 

Kathryn pauses. Chakotay squeezes her hands. 

“You can be a Starfleet Admiral and still care for the people who spent seven years on one ship with you. Don’t let them make you believe that you have to feel less just because you have a few extra rank bars on your collar, Kathryn Janeway.”

There’s an edge to his tone, at first soft and reassuring then firm and teasing. There’s that trick about him, that endearing quality that still sneaks in when she least suspects it. He makes her smile at all the impossible moments when she can’t fathom ever being happy again. 

“Don’t threaten my rank, _Captain_.” She chides. It feels so good to smile.

They were okay. They would be fine. Hell was going to come as they drifted through the wreckage of this unbelievable turnabout from the synthetics on Mars but it’s nothing that they can’t handle together. 

Chakotay isn’t trying to stop her worrying about Utopia Planitia or the thousands of lives lost. He couldn’t and he wouldn’t. But the truth is that the morning is going to come far earlier than either of them would like and they’re going to have to enter into a new world together. A world that is mourning and the crises that arise seem insurmountable. All he can do is to be with her as he has always been. Kissing her neck, a soft touch on her cheek, and watching her eyes slowly close as she accepts one more night before the galaxy collapses. 

_And sometimes I get so tired_  
Of getting tied up in my thoughts  
You're the only one that ever makes it stop

_- **Pink**_

They don’t expect the ban on synthetics. 

The next morning, it’s so soft it borders on painful when they’re curled in bed together, trying to remember how to exist in the world they have woken to. Kathryn is on top of him, stretched leisurely while her hands run their own path wherever she reach of him. He rolls them over, drawing her to him. They’re sticky and hot and she can feel a bobby pin leftover from last night prodding her neck but she’s too tired to do anything but allow herself to fall. 

Kathryn woke up from a delicious dream that was closer to reality than fiction. She reached down and there he was, all soft hair beneath her fingers as she came to wakefulness. Through sleep-heavy eyes she could still see him glance up at her as he realized she was awake. She met his gaze, saw the wickedness of those lips shining with the taste of her. He kept the connection as long as he could, dipping low again to slick his tongue through her folds.

Kathryn threw her head back, twisting her fingers into the dark locks and tugging him closer, murmuring a loose ‘ _good—oh!—morning’_ from bliss-slack lips. 

He licked and kissed and tasted her until she screamed and begged him to stop, until he crawled up her body to find their frenzied relief and Kathryn barely making it into her office on time.

“Just because you went rogue doesn’t mean the rest of us get to follow your example.” She huffed equal parts smirking enjoyment and daring herself to form the words when his breath blows hot on the hood of her cunt. Kathryn bites down hard enough on her lip to draw out a faint copper taste. She needs him to touch her and she needs him to hurry but Chakotay is stubbornly, wickedly oblivious.

“Do it.” He murmured, lowering his head to kiss her, tempting forth the low hum of pleasure from somewhere deep in her chest. “Go rogue with me, Kathryn.”

She shivered and told herself it’s from his mouth and not his words.

Nothing else is spoken except the stuttered swearing and her name vibrating when he draws breath and his name dripping with her need for mercy. She’s soaked between her thighs and on his tongue and her exhaustion transformed to a tension waiting to break. It feels absolutely indecent to steal this moment of blissful happiness when she knows what’s waiting for her. But Chakotay teases his teeth then tends with slow, broad strokes of the flat of his tongue.

She’s wet everywhere he can reach, and he indulges her everywhere she surrounds him. Kathryn rockets high and finally breaks with her fingers in his hair, his head between her legs, and his fingers curled unerringly inside her.

She’s boneless and pliant trying to pull him up to kiss her, to end this onslaught. Chakotay joins her slowly and builds up quickly to the blinding explosion.

But his offer doesn’t leave her. It follows her through shattering orgasms and their tender aftermath and the shower they share together.

Kathryn is gone to face a new day and Chakotay starts anew, reaching out to those they missed and rebuilding these lines of communication between them all. 

It’s inconceivable that the Federation should ban something that was set to be so life altering. Something that _is_ life altering, that was helping save lives right now and would improve the future for all of them. The capabilities were endless, especially for those cultures who relied on agriculture or manufacturing. It’s hailed as an inherent coding flaw but Kathryn doesn’t believe that and neither, quite frankly, do her own sources. 

“They won’t release the optics of the coding error.” B’Elanna had scowled over the video panel from the only ship she could find willing to travel at that moment. That lunch date would have to be postponed as it turns out even a priority vessel was stuck at warp two. “For all we know this could be totally fixable, but they don’t want anyone to risk attempting to fix it on the chance that it could make it work.” 

“That doesn’t make sense.” Kathryn frowns. 

“Tell me about it! If I had two hours with that code matrix, I might be able to isolate the command glitch that caused the Asimov Failsafe and create a patch to download into the remaining synths.” 

_But why would anyone be afraid of making the synths reliable again?_

B’Elanna was right, however, that no one was being allowed anywhere near the synthetic research lab and Starfleet would not be accepting the possibility that their potential could be salvaged. 

Or the Romulans. 

“Captain, there are nine million Romulan people needing help out there!” Harry was next to call her. “We haven’t even begun the evacuation of Romulus or finished with the outlying worlds!” 

“ _Admiral_ , Captain Kim.” She corrects him sharply, reminding him not really of rank but simply of who he is speaking to, that he should know surely of all people, _she_ understands. 

“Sorry, Admiral. I--,” Harry rubs the back of his neck. “I was caught in another time.” 

“Let’s hope you’re only speaking metaphorically, Harry.” 

“Of course.” He shrugs, deflating as he prepares to plead his case again. “Admiral, we can’t abandon those people. I know that they’re Romulans but they’re still people who are going to be decimated when that star goes supernova. No one deserves that.” 

Kathryn Janeway has had years of practice withholding tears. Seeing her former ensign pleading with such conviction for their moral obligation toward Starfleet’s oldest rival tests even her sturdy resolve. Kathryn sighs, leaning forward on her arms toward the video console.

“Tomorrow there’s a meeting with Admiral Picard and the board. He’s headed this project from the beginning so hopefully after that we’ll have some answers. Right now, I don’t have anything more than what is being told to me. The Federation and Starfleet feel like they must pull out of the rescue efforts to focus on the recovery of Utopia Planitia and our primary shipyard.” 

“You know this isn’t fair, Admiral.” 

_Of course I do!_ She thinks. _Of course, I know this is wrong. I believe it is. But then--is the Federation learning from my choices? I chose to abandon our people in a quadrant seventy million light years from home. We were fortunate to make it back with as many as we did in the time that we did. But what if Starfleet is saying, no, let’s not do that to ourselves? Was that the wrong choice?_

Kathryn wishes she could say in that moment, staring at Harry, emboldened by the passion of B’Elanna, and tired from the heartache of it all, that she was certain about her decision to destroy the Caretaker’s array. She is happier beyond words with the life she’s built now, with Chakotay by her side and the crew she knows as a family of their own, but at what cost? Is her happiness worth the years and the lives lost helping a group of people who had never even heard of them until they were dropped onto their galactic doorstep? 

Is it worth it now, if it means they are taking her history to abandon nine million Romulan people?

“I know that I will not stop working on this until we have an answer. I’ll have more orders for you after tomorrow but for now, standby and stand down.”

“Admiral Nechayev instructed us to alter course for Earth, Cap— _Admiral_.”

They’ve never quite been able to stop the habit of calling her captain even after all these years.

Kathryn bites back the twist of her grin in the barest way she can.

“I just gave you your orders, Captain. Standby. Janeway out.”

She catches his smile before the feed disrupts. Well, at least one person was pleased with her today.

Now if only she can pull through on the promise of better orders the next time they speak.

Dinner that evening goes mostly untouched. Kathryn doesn’t have much of an appetite and Chakotay has had all day to think about the ramifications of Starfleet’s choices. 

His voice is hoarse and uneven when he finally manages to speak. He pushes his plate away, arms folded on the table. “The good news for today is that I managed to tie up any loose ends from yesterday. I don’t know how but—they’re okay, Kathryn. All of them.”

She stares at him. Relief strikes her so hard she nearly sobs. She could kiss him and she might when they’re done hashing out the rest of this nightmare. She drops her fork onto her plate, hearing it clatter as a muted echo when the only real sound she can hear is that her people are _safe_.

“That’s almost cause to celebrate.”

“Almost,” he nods. “Now it’s your turn. What’s the bad news?”

Kathryn sighs, picking up her wine glass only to set it down again. She knew this moment would come.

She does her best to detail to him in words that range from disinterested to disbelieving everything she’s learned that day which is not much and not good. Fear and isolationism are brewing and popping up in every group they contact. Utopia Planitia has shaken them all, Starfleet, Federation, and not. The concept of such a terrible attack less than a decade after the Dominion War brings terrible, brutal terror onto a people who were only beginning to heal.

Chakotay listens, shoulders falling as she continues. He waits for her to finish before finding his voice again.

“It might seem a bit rash or foolhardy but there’s a part of me that still feels young at heart. Something inside me that forgets we spent seven years fighting to make it home and says I should be out there because this...Kathryn, this isn’t right.” 

There’s only one, brief, nanosecond of fear when her heart drops.

She steels herself from it quickly, conquers the very notion, dropping her shoulders and with it the tendril of terror that had slipped itself so quickly into her spine. Chakotay is not only her husband but her closest friend. She trusts him implicitly and knows that neither of them are willing to throw that trust away so easily.

“I know, I know.” Kathryn rubs her temples, reaching again for the glass of wine he’d set out for her. It’s such a familiar burn as it goes down that it’s practically smooth.

“All day I’ve been trying to think of the first time I ever doubted the Starfleet I was raised to believe in. I kept wondering where the first seed of doubt was planted. When did I realize that Starfleet is an organization comprised of individuals with the capacity to make the wrong decision at the critical moment?”

Kathryn rises from her chair to close the distance between them, leaning her hip on the table to meet his gaze. She can tell that Chakotay isn’t sure where she’s going but as always, is willing to follow whatever lead she gives.

“It wasn’t until the Delta Quadrant.” She confesses, reaching her hand out to rest with his on the table. “I kept looking at you, knowing that I had made the choice to have you by my side, commanding us through whatever unknowns awaited us, and trying to decipher how you could have been both a once great Starfleet officer and a Maquis terrorist.”

“What did you decide?” He sits back in his chair, watching her twist their fingers together. His thumb traces where she is, soothing lines while he waits for her verdict. 

“That something was wrong. Someone. Not only me but that somewhere in this equation, things weren’t adding up.”

The smile flashes quickly, disappearing beneath the weight of their conversation but there, even for a moment, nonetheless. Chakotay pulls her hand to him, changing the angle, pulling her close enough so that she’s practically in his lap. Memories drift in of a planet and a bathtub and a forbidden opportunity that would haunt them both for years to come afterward.

He kisses her hand and then her wrist. His other hand comes up to massage her knuckles.

“You weren’t fooled by my self-righteous fury?” 

“No, I believed you were angry. Furious. Driven by a passion so strong that it could not merely be misguided vigilantism.”

It sounds silly to admit that she never had the time to dig too much deeper into these doubts. Yet the time she might have spent trying to solve the problem of Starfleet’s Maquis-sized blind spot was poured into worrying about getting her crew home, politics to come later. Then, before she knew it, the idea that the people on her ship were two separate crews was a long-forgotten factor.

“This is what it feels like, Kathryn. When you see something so wrong being committed right in front of you by people wearing the same uniform as you, people who are supposed to hold the same moral standards. When I think about taking another mission, putting on the uniform next week as though I’m okay with what we’re doing...”

He lets her hand fall away. Kathryn may not be a Maquis rebel but Chakotay knows there is ample enough evidence in their history for her to understand what he means.Tension draws taut in his body, jaw set, neck strained. “I can’t say that complicity has ever suited me.”

 _“How could I forget?”_ Kathryn quips under her breath. A faint bitterness rises unbidden in her voice, a sour disposition that she didn’t think still existed. They’ve talked through most of their issues, then or when they got home and throughout the years. She doesn’t want to reach that point again, reminding themselves that they have to work together as this unified front. She keeps going, trying to navigate these tumultuous waters. 

“It’s easier, in hindsight, to see all of the places where we went wrong. Starfleet. The Federation. Now we’re in the middle of it again and I can’t seem to reason how we’re not creating the same mistakes with a different formula.”

Tears burn at the corner of her eyes as she works through her speech, syllables breaking with the honesty of her earnest disappointment at everything she’s ever believed. “What would you have me do, Chakotay? Abandon Starfleet?” 

He reaches over to drag her back to him, pulling her from the table to him, carrying as much of her strength as she’ll allow him. The expense of his hands rests around her, one at her middle, one sitting high on her leg. She looks down at them, marveling at the way they envelope her. Kathryn has always loved his hands. They make her feel small in a way that she doesn’t mind, the only way she’s never minded. 

He traces his thumbs across her thigh, massaging the tired muscles that have walked over half of Starfleet Headquarters and paced across innumerable Federation board rooms. Kathryn watches the familiar clench of his jaw as it strains and releases when he works through a problem. He can’t look at her when he speaks.

He’s so accustomed to bringing solutions to her problems, or at least, diversions. This time there’s neither and Kathryn knows it pains him. “There’s no great solution for any of this, not that works for everyone.” 

_I know,_ she thinks. _This might really be a problem bigger than either of us._

“Right now I’m not so sure that there’s a solution for anyone. Whatever Starfleet is saying right now, it’s not a real answer to our problem or the Romulans problem. This ban...this _abandonment_ of the Romulans and maybe anyone else in the blast zone leaves a bitter taste.”

“All of those people that the Federation expects us to leave to fend for themselves against a supernova?” He shakes his head. 

Chakotay’s relationship with this entire rescue mission was complicated to say the least. The first reports of Jean Luc brazenly moving Romulans into the Neutral Zone without any authorization had given him nightmares for days. Nightmares mixed with memories and tension that strung taut throughout every muscle and bone in his body. 

_‘These colonies have the Federation protections and resources in theory, Kathryn, but somehow the time it takes for these resources to trickle out isn’t as even as we like to believe. Now with Romulans there…’ He shook his head. They were in bed and the chronometer showed that it was almost 0300 hours. The sheet slipped low on his hips. Kathryn shifted until she was sitting behind him, legs wrapping around to draw him to her, kissing his back and his shoulders, running soothing traces of her hands along his arms to bring him into the present with her._

_She listened and kissed him and listened more, letting him air it all out in hopes that it would help excise these demons from his rest._

_‘I hope we’re not making the same mistakes again, Kathryn.’_

The lesson then wasn’t that they shouldn’t help the Romulans and it is not that lesson now. Starfleet had not fulfilled its responsibility to its people twenty years ago against the Cardassians. They had an obligation that required meticulous work and thorough follow up. Peace and unification could be achieved but not merely by a hero’s ego to save these people from a supernova but also too from the ramifications of a life upheaved.

“Jean Luc resigned.”

She doesn’t know what prompts her to say it. Maybe the hope that it will bring him anything akin to comfort to know that they are not alone in how they feel right now. By the shocked twist of his head to stare at her, she guesses that it works. Kathryn continues. 

“According to Kirsten, he gave the council an ultimatum that they can either revisit the plans he made with Commander Musiker or accept his resignation.” 

Chakotay sits back in his chair, releasing a heavy, tired sigh. 

“I’m guessing Bordson didn’t take it well.” He looks to her for confirmation. 

“Bordson is tired. He’s been tired for years. Kirsten too. It was already tenuous with those worlds threatening to withdraw from the Federation. We’ve been fighting to maintain this mission not only against the Romulans who don’t believe we want to help them of sheer benevolence but those within the Federation as well. So many worlds who need things too. It’s one thing to tell an engineer to refit a ship instead of a new warp core or a scientist to make a synthetic instead of a theory. Starfleet officers will do what is asked of them, we knew that.” 

Kathryn lifts herself from his embrace, drawn once more to that fixated pacing as she expels the stressors they’ve all been combating for months, no— _years_.

“But these people joined the Federation, not Starfleet. These were supposed to be mutually beneficial relationships to establish peace and cohesion among the galaxy, harmony. Now we’ve stalled their replicators, delayed their resources and for some, asked them to house their oldest enemies. It’s no wonder they’ve been talking about leaving.” 

“That would never have been in their best interest--” 

She interrupts him, rounding on her heels before he can continue what they’ve already been over a dozen times since it was first given to her in confidence. “But they’re scared and they’re angry.” 

Bitterness drips in his words. “I know the feeling.” 

Kathryn doesn’t take his venom personally.

“It’s impossible to garner any kind of support for the relief mission. These people are trying to lick their wounds and keep their loved ones close.” 

“We would still help them.” 

She knows what he means by ‘ _we_.’

If this was Voyager and the Delta Quadrant, they would. How could they continue on their journey home, simply move along the cosmos knowing that in their wake they would leave millions to die but they had the capacity to save them?

Kathryn closes the distance she created between them, fast footsteps bringing her directly before him. She seeks him out as she always does on the verge of an important choice. Chakotay turns to her, meeting her directly. The air is electric as their future waits in the next few minutes.

“I don’t want to stop fighting for them, Chakotay. The only thing to figure out is how? Do we get a ship? An armada? Who will crew these vigilante ships? Sure, there are groups already existing outside standard Federation guidelines. The rangers, of course, and—” Kathryn stops herself before the ranger name that she’s not supposed to know falls out.

“But… ” 

_I don’t want to lose these Starfleet ideals, not again_. And she would, if needed. If it came to protecting her people from a threat against them, some force determined to destroy them in their mission of peace, she will always choose her people. _But can I keep my principles in an organization that would allow millions to die while we sit idly by to lick our wounds?_

It’s the real moral quandary she’s been wrestling with since she got up this morning. 

Too twisted into the tangled web that is her passion and principles waged against what she once believed in, Kathryn doesn’t see him rise until he’s invading her space, shuffling her back and holding her there with an arm snaking around her waist.

It’s so sudden that it shakes her free from the havoc of her own thoughts which was of course, his intention. She cocks a dubious brow at him but he is all genuine concern when he looks at her. Chakotay lets her go, takes a step back so she can truly hear him without any distraction when he speaks.

“If Starfleet and the Federation are willing to go against everything they are supposed to stand for then maybe it needs people who will stay and fight from the inside. Not run away. Not resign. Maybe this time, the place we need to be is here.” 

It sounds like he’s giving her an excuse to stay where she is but Kathryn understands the truth behind how difficult that idea must be for him. She knows he would rather take a more direct role, that everything in his being wants to fix this even if they don’t have a clue of where they could start on such a mammoth task.

She’s amazed at how after all this time, she can fall in love with him even more. But this isn’t only about making her comfortable to go into work every day.

“Starfleet Academy could probably use a professor who’s going to remind this next generation of recruits of the reason that they joined. If you’re still struggling with a reason to put your uniform on in the morning…”

The offer has been there for him for years. Starfleet Academy tried every trick they could to persuade him to take up a teaching position but Chakotay wasn’t quite done with stars yet. He was older upon their return, a little wiser, he hoped, and in a galaxy recovering from war it felt like recovery was more important than instructing. Every official event would send the department heads swarming to lure him over, making their offers and teasing a class list she knew he found tempting.

“I would never presume to tell you what to do and you’ve certainly earned your retirement if you want to start tomorrow but--”

He shifts back from her. Kathryn wonders if, in all his time today reuniting their happy family, he’s been giving that part some thought as well. What paths has he been considering and how have they transformed since she came home?

“I can’t pretend to be okay with any of this, Kathryn.” Chakotay worries his bottom lip, rolling it through his teeth as he thinks. “I don’t know if I’m the right person for that job but you’re right. It’s important now more than ever to have a little civil disobedience to remind them that justice is not always enacted by those meant to protect it.”

There’s an apology in his gaze when he finds her again.

“I can’t pretend that this doesn’t bother the hell out of me.” 

Kathryn shakes her head lightly.

“I would never ask you to.” 

He exhales, the weight in his chest finally starting to fall away.

“I know.” His grin is slow and catlike. “But it’s good to hear it anyway.”

Kathryn glides over to him again. He loves the way she approaches him, watching her move toward him with a surety and affection that he never gets tired of. The anticipation of her touch is something he’s lived with for years and it never loses that delightfully electric crackle, waiting for her hand to fall on his shoulder or the seam of his uniform. Or _elsewhere_.

She smiles at him. They haven’t solved the problems facing the Romulans or the synthetics or the Federation but they’ve found their own comfort in the interim, something to sustain them for the days to come.

“We seem to know each other pretty well.” Her nails stroke the skin just above the opening of his shirt. Chakotay can’t hide the shiver that arcs through his body.

He leans down to nuzzle her neck with lingering brushes under her uniform collar.

“It helps that I’m in love with you.” 

The low rumble of his voice makes her tremble.

The only relief in this myriad of despair is that she doesn’t feel alone this time. There’s no acclimation period or waiting to see if the rebel group she’s hurled into this journey will betray her or their cause. She has all of them and they have each other as well. 

She has him and on the darkest days that she knows are yet to come, he’ll have her too. 

It’s only something of a decision, the closest they can come at this time. They both understand that this decision is only as finite as what the Federation chooses to do tomorrow and tomorrow and every day after. Right now, tonight, this feels like as correct of a course that they can fly, trying to mitigate the casualties of fear and mourning. It doesn’t feel good. It doesn’t feel like justice or surety that they are doing the right thing.

Another choice they will learn to live with and hope like hell that this will not be one of those terrible mistakes they can only see in memory. Kathryn is familiar with enough of those and does not wish to add more to her considerable list.

She pulls him tighter in the bare space separating them, kissing him with an acute need not to lose herself this time, but to find herself again.

This life that they’ve built together is the testament to all that they have been through, to how they feel, and who they are, individually and united. It’s impossible to think that two people could create something as strong as this legacy of love and hope but her heart bursts with affection any time she recognizes the truth in this, in finding happiness against the odds. 

Kathryn gently maneuvers him back until his knees hit the chair behind him. She settles herself on his lap, feeling his arms come up instinctively to hold her there.

Chakotay meets her demand with desire, hands that shape to fit around her middle, that cup the back of her neck. She loves feeling the air rush out of her lungs, trapped in all the nonexistent space between them. 

She loves the palm of his hand slipping down to the small of her back and drawing her down to him.

She loves the hungry sounds that rumble from his throat while she kisses him. She can’t ever seem to fully reconcile that he could still find her so desirable after all this time but Chakotay works hard to remind her every time they’re together. It’s incredibly sexy and she’s glad for the umpteenth time that she married him. 

The yelp that leaves her body is undignified but thankfully muffled by Chakotay sealing his lips over hers. He lifts them, shoving things away and Kathryn finds herself sprawled on their dinner table as Chakotay looms over her as a predator over prey. He looks deadly and wild and the only thing in his vision is _her_.

Kathryn pulls him down to her and Chakotay follows without question.

“Chakotay,” she breathes his name into his neck while he kisses her collar. “Bedroom, Chakotay.” 

“Table, Kathryn.” He counters, a mimic of last night flooding memories back that send a surge of heat low in her belly. Chakotay latches hard at the flutter of her pulse. Wicked sensation arcs through her entire being. She can feel her toes starting to curl with every slow undulation. Her breasts are crushed against him, drawn to stiff, sensitive peaks by sheer friction of moving with him.

Her hips are jutted against the unforgiving handmade table

Kathryn bites her lip but the whimper falls out regardless. She starts to protest, longing for the luxury of their bed warred with the need for him to keep touching her. 

“Two nights in a row. We’re too--”

“Don’t.” He nips at her, his teeth brushing the strong jut of her jaw. “Don’t even think about finishing that sentence, Kathryn Janeway.” 

She likes when he’s assertive with her. She likes the rising feeling of a challenge along her spine. Kathryn digs her nails into the nape of his neck, surging forward to steal the next stern disapproval from his lips before he can voice it. 

“My back isn’t getting any younger, Chakotay.” Kathryn finds the bob of his throat and teases the rough skin between her teeth for revenge. A dark purple mark is already appearing when she lets it pop back into place. Kathryn licks it, soothing the spot, promising herself to come back to it later.

“Who said you have to be on your back, Kathryn?” 

He cups her breasts through her uniform and Kathryn gasps, forehead pressed against his.

 _Bastard_.

There’s an ongoing tease between them pushing her arousal higher and higher with the sinfully precise rock that pushes his cock against her core and back again. The night before he left out with the cadets who volunteered for an extracurricular anthropology excursion, Chakotay had left her limp and hoarse, legs turned soft and malleable as he curled over her, kissing her neck and her spine with his hips rocking into her oblivion again. 

It wasn’t her favorite position, but it was far from a least favorite and it was a highly effective position, one that they employed when Kathryn was wanting to feel well and truly fucked and Chakotay was always more than happy to oblige.

She had never liked being on her knees with anyone else. Before him it had always felt...degrading.

She had seen it as filthy in a way that hadn’t appealed to her, to be seen as finally succumbing, being the lesser. She didn’t like being viewed as someone to be conquered as a trophy. She had told Chakotay as much on a very inebriated, very candlelit dinner shared one evening in her quarters on Voyager. He, in return, told her that he wasn’t into what he considered violent sex, that after home and Seska, it took more out of him than it gave to try that level of vulnerability with another person. She understood. She had never truly gotten off that way before in the past. 

Kathryn didn’t miss the thick swallow that followed her confession or the uncomfortable way he shifted in his chair. She had to be quite intentional to avert her gaze from where she wanted to glance.

 _‘Maybe,’_ she had thought for a brief flicker then quickly drowned the thought away with the last of that homebrewed wine Neelix made in the hydroponics bay. 

‘ _Trust me,_ ’ Chakotay gently tempted her in a whisper one morning, years later, together in his apartment in the Alpha Quadrant. _‘You don’t have to. It’s not important but if--’_

_‘Yes.’_ It was a bigger step than either of them could truly vocalize. 

She had three mind blowing orgasms that morning. Three was fairly average for Chakotay who seemed determined to send her to an early grave of orgasms and overexertion in the beginning but rarely from one position. Yet he had caressed her, made her feel loved and appreciated, touched her breasts and cupped her sex, splaying her open until her world splintered into pieces. 

“No,” she kisses him now, back in the present, in their home by the lake where the moonlight streams in through the tall windows. Her hands work at the fastening of his pants, making his breath catch at the graze of her fingers against the sensitive skin along his waist. 

She doesn’t have to explain anything else to him. ‘ _No’_ is simple and enough and he retaliates thoroughly against her uniform. Every time she’s close to getting him disrobed, Chakotay innovates a new way of driving her to distraction, peppering quick kisses along her neck, caressing her breasts, the warmth of his hands trailing beneath her uniform undershirt. 

She loses her jacket and shirt first but Kathryn manages to finally wrap her hand around the swelling cock that jerks in response her touch, sensitive and familiar and _growing_. 

Chakotay is momentarily halted, head down, breathing uneven while she twists her hand up and down, thumb circling the sensitive tip. He swears when she reaches the bottom and squeezes hard at the base. 

“Kathryn!” 

It doesn’t matter what her earlier protests were because Chakotay is frenzied to finish undressing her, tossing garments in any direction until she’s naked and on her back with him between her legs again. 

She still would prefer to take this to their bedroom but the more he touches her and the hotter his breath sending chills on her skin, she finds that she’s not opposed to waiting like this— _ah!_ —a little longer.

Kathryn moans into the hot air around them at the press of his naked body to hers, tantalized by the feeling of his skin, the rasp of the spattering of hair on his chest, his navel, the places where packs of muscle remain and strain as he longs to lose himself within her. 

He’s still utterly gorgeous and thoroughly intoxicating. 

Chakotay would say more for her. He would tell her that she’s the most sensual woman he’s ever known and watching her fall apart under him or over him, locked together in a passionate frenzy is still the best thing he’s ever seen in his life. 

The table is a bad place for them. They haven’t considered themselves young enough for this in a long time. Neither are as lithe as they once were but Kathryn finds it hard to regret anything when the broad of his hips are splaying her thighs open to his advances. She’s starting to feel the delicious ache in the spread of her legs around the thick of his waist when her world adjusts again. She’s moved by the bruising grip of his hands on her waist and the momentum shifts quickly. Chakotay sits back in the chair again, Kathryn straddled atop him.

He pauses to take a deep breath and she looks down at him. 

“Making me do all the work, Professor?” Kathryn leans forward to nibble on the sensitive lobe of his ear, that one he fidgets with when he’s nervous or even better, _mischievous_. Chakotay groans, a whole new set of fantasies playing out in his mind at the moniker. Kathryn, greeting him in his office. Kathryn, bending herself willingly over a desk strewn with papers. Kathryn, haplessly pushing it all away, pushing him back and sinking to her knees—

A wreckage of arduous growls and moans burst between them, echoing from him to her and lost in in graceless kisses. The way her moans slide higher from the smoke and husky whimper of her voice rockets straight to the base of his spine. He doesn’t think it’s possible to be any harder than he is but Kathryn fucks herself on him through the remaining layers of his clothes.

He can feel how damp she is, can feel her wetness covering him, daring him to _do something_.

“Not since the day we met.” He retaliates against her throat. 

She digs in hard to the firm planes of his back. 

He drags her down against the swelling pressure at the front of his trousers, hard and insistent digging into her core through their layers of clothing. Chakotay seizes control of her motions with strong hands, bringing her back to him at a rhythm too slow to tease her into rapture but just enough to get her close.

“Chakotay--” 

“Too many clothes?” He supplies on a hot breath. 

Kathryn nods hastily. Her lipstick is smeared. She’s sex drunk and kiss swollen and he finds her unbearably arousing with the loose hairs framing her face. “Too many clothes.” 

They both have a bit more silver in their hair than when they first met. A bit rounder, a bit softer. A little more tired and weary from the new troubles that arise when they have spent their entire lives championing for justice and peace.

But this, this all-encompassing need to touch each other has never waned.

Chakotay still caresses her breasts with the same reverence as their first time together, wraps his lips around as much as he can take into his mouth, suckles hard until she’s blinking back tears. He grates a muffled ‘ _perfect’_ around the tender flesh in his mouth that vibrates into her core. 

It’s incredible how the broad swipe of his hand on her cunt quivers her thighs until she’s ready to give out and he’s there to catch her. 

She shivers and bursts and breaks on a long whine that’s almost a scream with his fingers curled inside her, the smear of his kisses trailing across her breasts. Kathryn yanks at the long hairs at the nape of his neck, greedy to kiss him and pour her adoration into him until he is as raw and ridden as she is right now. He’s so good it’s criminal and even though she’s had almost seven years of galaxy shattering sex with him, there’s always a pang of the seven years they missed. 

They kiss messily around his fingers when he draws them to his lips to taste her. She licks the taste of herself on him and the moan he lets slip reverberates like a shockwave through them both. Chakotay’s resolve until this point has been nothing short of heroic but Kathryn is naked on his lap and she just licked herself from his fingers.

“I need you.” Desperate is an undeserving word for how much he wants her. Two hands on her ass and he massages the flesh roughly, urging her up and down, caught in the maelstrom of needing to be naked and how he absolutely cannot stop touching her.

It’s obscene and Kathryn feels deliciously indulgent in letting him suffer this torture only a little longer while she indulges herself on top of him. 

She can’t get his pants off completely without breaking apart more than she’s willing to separate so she settles for tugging them down far enough to free him to her advances. Chakotay can’t breathe when she touches him and wraps her fingers around him. He collapses into her, head falling onto her chest, eyes closed, trying not to lose it all before they’ve really begun. For all the snarling, hungry sounds she draws from him, he swears that Kathryn has never understood the devastating effect she has on him. 

“Kathryn,” he pants. “ _Kathryn_ , _please_.”

He could take over if he wanted to. The same hands that hold her now could lift her onto him easily, could take over, take control. Kathryn loves him like this, so big and strong and completely powerless to her. She likes seeing his beautiful bronze hands against her fairer skin, particularly when they grip her thighs like they do now, tantalizing her as they move closer to where she’s keening to be touched. The tenuous game of control they play winds her up to a feverish pitch waiting for him to push her over the edge.

But tonight there’s no game to be played. It’s all messy, hard grinding and she can’t get good grounding like this, sitting on top of him with her toes barely brushing the floor but they’re both so close to that blissful explosion that nothing matters but chasing the high they’re so close to finding.

Kathryn takes mercy on them both. She lifts herself, adjusts, and sinks down onto him in one long push that leaves them both gasping for air.

Foreheads pressed together, sharing the same hot breath passing between them as they both remember how to breathe again, Kathryn revels at how right he feels like this. He’s so big and so deep at this angle that the first curl of her hips brings tears to her eyes, so full that the slightest movement hits every perfect nerve ending in her body.

His lips have lost their concentration when they move across her chest, grazing and teasing and vibrating every moan against her skin. He feels whole with her, that even amidst the heat of her taking him in completely, she’s still somehow the calm among the chaos. His entire being focuses onto feeling her, giving him a singular purpose to serve that’s never suited him so well in all his life.

Chakotay kisses over her breasts, to her shoulders and her neck, high and low. Even on top of him, she’s so small that he could everywhere he wants and he does want to touch her everywhere.

“You feel—”

“—so good!” Kathryn finishes, taking another experimental roll of her hips.

 _Oh, fuck_. His mind is short circuiting when she writhes, pressing herself down hard on him only to tease away. Chakotay can’t stop touching her, feverish, lusty touches that don’t do nearly enough to assuage the ache building in his cock every time she fucks him. A hand cradling her backside, helping her move, pleading with her to keep going, the other caressing the line of her rib cage up to her breasts, resting lightly at her throat. Kathryn leans into the touch, feels him push her into it. She can feel his eyes roaming over all the marks he’s left on her body, fingertips finding them in hapless patterns.

He won’t last, not like this. Not watching her head fall back when he drives his hips up to hit the spot that drives her mad, not feeling her ride these tight circles to meet him thrust for thrust, feeling her body welcome him back over and over.

He needs to see her come undone, needs to feel her body quake until it breaks apart while he watches when she falls.

Everything he has shifts to the intention of every pleasure spot he’s ever found in her, planting his feet firmly on the ground so that what distance she can’t reach he makes up for with intensity. Kathryn can’t keep up a rhythm in this frenzy and neither can he, both of them driving mercilessly into the other. His fingertips dig in until the pain becomes a sharp and beautiful.

The pressure is building to a blinding point and Chakotay knows he has to make her come and fast before he loses himself completely.

“Kathryn,” he groans. There’s a small expanse behind her ear that has her practically purring, hips shuddering in their strokes when he kisses her there. “You’re so wet, Kathryn.”

The sound of her undoing is immeasurably erotic. He’s right, of course, and he can feel that wetness coating his fingers when, with a hand at her ass and his lips kissing her neck, Chakotay touches her in quick, hard strokes right above where they’re joined. Kathryn screams and it reverberates in his ear and into his being. The explosion that shakes her is unbearable and tremendous, rocking her through another, sharper release right on the heels of the first. He stays with her as long as he can, riding up to the brink until he can’t take it any longer and her name roaring from his chest, finally finds his peace again.

“You have a message.” Chakotay’s voice rumbles in low, gentle tones the next morning. He kisses her shoulder to draw her slowly to wakefulness. Kathryn resists briefly, feeling her bones ache deliciously when he presses himself against her back. She stretches languidly against him, noting with some groggy dismay that he’s at least partially dressed now.

Chakotay drifts lower, beneath her ear, softly grazing along her jaw and down the line of her neck. She can feel him pause when her breasts are in his view. It’s sweet and wonderful and entirely too early.

Kathryn rolls over toward him, letting her eyes flutter though sleep still clings to her. She grins, catlike and insolent at the sudden intake he tries to cover.

“Of all the ways you’ve woke me up throughout our marriage, I have to say this is not one of my favorites. Can’t it wait?”

“No.” Another kiss to her shoulder, another to her neck, his hand rubbing firm, insistent circles on the bare skin of her hip and pointedly ignoring any of her other wonderfully naked parts. She can hear the smirk in his voice before she opens her eyes. “There’s coffee on your nightstand.”

Kathryn glances at him beneath low, tired lids. "Alright, it's getting better." She sits up slowly, yawning and stretching. The sheet slips from her completely and this time there's nothing to be done to hide his choked sputter. Kathryn smirks, reaching for the warm mug beckoning her from the bedside table. "Who is it? Kirsten? Victor?" 

“More important.”

_More important than two of the Starfleet’s top-ranking officials?_

Kathryn moves quicker now, taking the PADD from him. It’s a simple text communication, no video attached or files. Coordinates first, somewhere near the ever-dissipating Neutral Zone, anywhere from eight to sixteen hours apart depending on the quality of the ship and the warp drive, and then, lower, a message.

_Home? – **7** _

_**to be continued...** _

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! This will have a part two but I hate to leave things on cliffhangers so I wanted this to be able to be read as a oneshot. I started this fic when Picard was still airing so please understand if the second part takes uhhh a minute to get finished lol. If you want, the best way to find me is on twitter at catmsquared. Comments and kudos are welcome and appreciated. :)


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